Roses Damask'd
by Mademise
Summary: Homoerotism! Homoerotism! More homoerotism! A snippet of something possibly odd or sweet or fun for every day of the month of June. T for Language, Insinuation, homoerotism and possibly heteroerotism. Centered around the numerous admirers of one China Sorrows.
1. Chapter 1

If Hell were a real place, something tangible and tantalizing and a thousand times more than anything you could imagine, then Hell would probably be modeled after this. It might even be situated here, at this moment in time, on the tips of your fingers as you touch my arm and smile and tell me it will all be okay when we both know it won't.

Considering the past few days, that's a lot to say. The past few weeks, even more. The past few years, though?

I would have been ready to say I have been through Hell, China. I would have gone there in an instant, without any hesitation whatever, because up until now, I believed it. Hell was war and fighting and killing and hurting and watching everything I valued fall apart.

And then it was watching you draw away from me and knowing that something between us had broken and we'd never be quite the same as we were, and it was seeing you falling in love with another, a mere man who didn't ever deserve you.

At this instant, however, Hell is knowing both how close you are to me and how incredibly, incredibly far.

* * *

**A/N: Having finished Poppling and knowing that there is absolutely no pairing for the SP series I wouldn't write, this probably won't seem as crack-y as it could be. I'm starting out with a Murder/China, and that's one of the most incredibly obvious pairings I've written! But still, I hope you will all enjoy reading it and look kindly upon this endeavor. =)  
**

**~Mademise Morte, June 1, 2012.  
**


	2. Chapter 2

I knew you were trouble before I ever heard you speak. Your anger was clear in your eyes from the moment you cast your gaze towards me, and I knew I would never escape you from the instant I learned your name.

Your chambers smelled of opium and your lips were poppy red, and I was so wrapped in dream that I passed out before I could ever make my intentions clear. Maybe that's what you wanted, too – you were always a little cruel.

And I awoke and I found you, still like a statue that has never known sleep, and your eyelids were heavy like the brush-strokes of a master, and your eyes were wild like forest-fire. I told you as much, and your laughter was like crows. I told you that too, and you made me stop talking, still laughing and still glorious.

The days we spent together were the best of my life, and the time I spent with you is what I return to when despondent. You bring out the happy in me, and it's been a while since that happened last.

So if you could please just call me back once you get this message…

* * *

**A/N: This is, of course, Gordon. Thus the third paragraph.  
**

**~Mademise Morte, June 2, 2012.  
**


	3. Chapter 3

Friendship between us was fairly amusing. Insipid, but amusing. You'd think that there'd be a limit to how much time you could spend talking about flowers and sugary things and the color pink, and maybe there is, but we never seemed to reach it. In fact, even when we were a bit older, we seemed to stay on the same topics, just different aspects – flowers that kill and sugars that hide and the pink that is viscera freshly spilled from corpses.

Enmity, though? That, my dear China, was _fun_.

You have always been sharp, and I've never not been struggling to catch up. You are spikes and razor edges shrouded in all that is attractive. Our sparring matches were quick, you more often the victor than I, and you were my whetstone, in a way, even as you ground my bones up for bread, or so it felt.

I got better. Not fast like you, with your learning curves as steep as right angles, but I got better, and I was contest. Maybe. Towards the end. You caught up, though, as always.

I was infuriated, but not a lot, because enmity or no enmity, I love you more than anything.

* * *

**A/N: Eliza Scorn, and written in three minutes because I'm way over the time I'm meant to stop using the computer.  
**

**Anyone else doing Camp NaNoWriMo?**

**~Mademise Morte, June 3, 2012.  
**


	4. Chapter 4

I thought you were flawless the first time I saw you, with your beauty and your grace. I thought you might not even be human – you were that wonderful.

Then you kicked me in the shin and twisted my arms behind me and slammed an elbow into my gut and told me I was a vile excuse for a human being, and I think that was the exact point when I fell in love with you, in addition to being forever a worshipper at whatever altar may choose to honor you.

I started out as a friend of your brother's, someone who would train with him and grow strong together with him, but he abandoned me after that day, and I thought, for a long, horrible moment, that you would too.

But no. You trained me instead, made me strong with your words and your spells and your strength, and every look of reproach you ever deigned to cast in my direction hit like a knife and you whittled and whittled away at me until I was something worth wasting a second glance on.

You made me something great, but we both knew that I would never be your equal.

* * *

**A/N: I'm pretty sure I mean for this to be Gruesome Krav, though I'd have to reread The Faceless Ones to confirm that.**

**~Mademise Morte, June 4, 2012. **


	5. Chapter 5

Every word from your mouth was a fist, curled tight and made invincible with the venom that was your disapproval and you were invincible with the poison that is your will to live and you were beautiful with the intoxication that is life. You were the most amazing thing I ever witnessed, and being near you was like being near a God.

I admired you despite myself, despite knowing that you would someday be my ruin, because nothing like me can ever survive in a world that holds you. You had my respect and my regard and my will to live – from the first moment, I was yours, forever.

That never really changed. We both say it did, pretend it did, but we know that, from the first, you were my doom, and we know that I took it willingly, like everything that you have ever offered to me. We pretended I could be made invincible with the drug that is your affection, and it almost worked.

It was a close thing, but even with that, we never really doubted what was going to happen, and so you bested me, time and time again, as expected.

It was worth it.

* * *

**A/N: This one's Murder again... =)  
**

**~Mademise Morte, June 5, 2012.  
**


	6. Chapter 6

The dawn sky is blue and black and purple like the bruises that adorn his skin like it is canvas and China Sorrows is braiding her hair and watching his eyes in the mirror carefully, like she thinks he might run, but of course he won't, because if he was that smart then he wouldn't be here in the first place.

Her own flesh is unmarred by such memories of the night. She remains untouched and untouchable, and he really isn't surprised. There isn't even any kind of remorse in her eyes, not that he was waiting for it. He's come to expect a lot from China over the years, but anything resembling a typical human emotional response is quite certainly not one of them.

She casts him a quick look after she is dressed and coiffed, her immaculacy only augmented by her cloth casings. He nods, and in the same careful quiet that has been the mark of their time together, he tries to make himself respectable as well.

The spell is broken when she sees him out of her door, leans against the frame and smiles with just a hint of wickedness. "Goodbye," she says, and is gone.

* * *

**A/N: This is one of the Diablerie boys, though I haven't decided which. Maybe Jaron.**

**~Mademise Morte, June 6 **


	7. Chapter 7

He hears the sounds of her heels from quite a ways away, and he immediately begins to panic, reasoning that he wouldn't be able to hear her approach if she didn't want him to and that she wouldn't want him to if she didn't have an issue with him and _oh God, he's doomed._

She is soon in his field of vision, and he is kind of curled up with his hands over his eyes and twitching like a rather small, sad beetle. "For Gods's sake, Solomon, get a grip," she says, raising one eyebrow.

He sighs, stands, dusts himself off. "Have I been of offense?" he asks tiredly. "Because I'm really in no fit state to deal with any issues that might have arisen through my own fault."

"It's not you this time," she says, and he realizes just how tired she looks and he realizes that even when she looks like she's been the fine-toothed comb that has been dragged through Hell, she has a rather lovely way of plucking at his heartstrings. "I need somewhere to hide."

"All that is mine is as good as your own," he says quickly. "As ever."

"Thank you," she says, smiling.

* * *

**A/N: I had fun with this one.  
**

**~Mademise Morte, June 7, 2012.  
**


	8. Chapter 8

They meet on the kind of grey night that really feels no substantially different from day except that it is, and everything feels like a dream, as if it is felt through gauze, and the way their eyes meet is the pairing of puzzle pieces that have never known anything but the corner of the craft knife and they don't imagine that the moment could ever end.

In the shifting, nebulous monstrosity that is the space between dusk and dawn without the guidance of any kind of moon, they melt into each other like there was never anything of worth keeping them apart in the first place, and there is no sound but silence that twitches and flails for a grip in the wall that is so much steeper than it ever bargained for and finally falls.

The moment ends, but they are left without regrets because nothing else does, and even when they reform into two separate beings, they are still mixed into each other in that strange, desperate way that they might understand if they tried but never have cared to, and they go on with their lives both the same as ever and completely and totally different.

* * *

**A/N: It doesn't really sound like it, I know, but this is meant to be Eliza Scorn.  
**

**~Mademise Morte, June 8, 2012.  
**


	9. Chapter 9

He is sprawled against her doorstep and she frowns at him as unguarded as she has been in a while, though that is still fairly careful and closed because there is nothing in this world left that she thinks is worth being open for at this second in time. She gently nudges his side with the toe of her shoes, and the ice-blue is marred with burgundy.

She then opens up completely, screaming to her God as she lets her magic run from her, terrified and terrorized by the panicking woman, and the magic works with her will even though she still has no idea what it is, and the man is soon inside her house, immobilized and healing, and she is hurt beyond what she has ever thought to be, and she is ashamed of herself.

He has no memories of her frenzy, and even if he did, he wouldn't have let it be known, because he is smarter than that, and he always has known how to deal with her. For that, she despises him and she adores him, and in the most basic way possible, she knows that she will never really be able to escape him.

* * *

**A/N: This is either Skulduggery or Solomon. I'm honestly not sure which would fit this better.**

**~Mademise Morte, June 9, 2012. **


	10. Chapter 10

For all her weaknesses, China Sorrows has never been the kind of person you could call _weak_. Not publically, anyway, and certainly not to her face, because then you would find out just how strong she is, and that is generally not the kind of thing people volunteer for.

Not more than once, anyway.

For all her strength and her pride, though, she's always found herself drawn to those who make her feel like less. She hates herself for it. She wants to be a wonder in her own right, not the pretty face that gets a little of the credit at the end.

The thing about neutrality, though, is that you always seem more distant than you are, and that's how she keeps herself aloof. When it was Murder and Eliza, she aligned herself with those meddling ones that believed they were in the right, not because she agreed with their cause, but because they were convenient.

When it's Valkyrie, though, there's not a lot she can do. She tries to go in the opposite direction, but all Valkyrie does is chase her, and in the end, China can't run that far.

She can't bring herself to regret it.

* * *

**A/N: Me-h.  
**

**~Mademise Morte, June 10, 2012.  
**


	11. Chapter 11

Desire has ever been to her nothing more than another tool in her arsenal of pain and leverage and always striving to get ahead. True, it's one of her best weapons, one of her most faithful, but it's still only a thing and nothing more.

Not only is it a thing, it's a thing that happens to other people, and this is something she's known since forever. It's something that happens to the weaker souls, to the susceptible, to the ones upon whom she has built her empire, the backs that she has broken for the conquests she never meant to keep.

Then she meets Lord Vile, and she knows like she has known little else that desire might well be nothing more than an instrument of torture but there are others who can wield it far better than she's ever dreamt to, and even as she fights him, relishing every stolen second of their struggles, she knows that there is no way she can win.

Not now, anyway. Not yet.

She spends the subsequent years making herself stronger, and even when she surpasses him, she knows that she's lost the battle anyway, because she's done it all for him.

* * *

**A/N: In a weird way, even though I love the idea of this pairing, I kind of despise it as well.  
**

**~Mademise Morte, June 11, 2012.  
**


	12. Chapter 12

She is loath to admit it, but she hates the attention.

She dislikes the throngs that surround her, the endless lines of admirers, of suitors, of _gentlemen callers_. They all want so much of her, and so little of her, and in the end, it has never been her goal to satisfy them, because they are Lesser Beings, in the grand scheme of things, and she doesn't have the time to waste on them.

She does, though, because as much as she wants to spend her life tucked away with her books, she can't as long as they intrude, because they are _intrusive little bastards_, and if left unappeased, they will never go away, and she's never been that good at keeping hidden anyway, so she gives them their smiles, their acknowledgement, their _graceful affection_, and she turns them like tricks in the hope that they'll just go away.

They do, but some don't, so many don't, and at the end of the day, there are still more of them, always _more_ of them, and they all _want _so much more than she has ever had to give.

She gives it anyway. At least this way they can be managed.

* * *

**A/N: I like writing irate!China. It feels a lot more honest than not.**

**~Mademise Morte, June 12, 2012. **


	13. Chapter 13

Feeling hunted, haunted and assaulted by the barrage of insults and compliments and confessions of complete and total adoration that have made up the sum of her life so far, or so it seems, she burns the hair she collects on her brush and from the floor and from her bed, because she knows the kind of magic you can wreak with the fallen excess that is humanity, and it really is all excess, isn't it?

She hides herself from the window, feigning fear of the sun, when really it is its children that she finds herself in horror of, and she grows pale like a ghost and wishes that the mirror would swallow her up whole so that no mere human ever can, but it never does.

In a fit of pique, she breaks it, and she watches her blood drip onto the floor with the shattered glass and then she has to clean it, because if hair was a liability then blood would probably be a death writ, because given belief, there is no Hell that humans cannot wreak, no havoc that cannot be unleashed.

After all these years of being hunted, haunted and assaulted, she knows that.

* * *

**A/N: I had a lot of fun with the alliteration here, as you might have guessed.**

**~Mademise Morte, June 13, 2012. **


	14. Chapter 14

His grip on her hand is far too tight, but she is trying to ignore it as she has ignored so many things about him that make her want to absolutely _slaughter_ him, because she knows that where he is weak she is strong and where he is strong she is weak, and she knows that he knows that.

It's always been that way. He's the brawn and she's the beauty, and brains are something that they've always had in common. They offset each other beautifully, keep each other as sane as is possible for the likes of them, and that's not exactly something you find a lot in the world of the magical.

She wonders what would happen if he died. He seems to be pretty near to it now, but she knows that he'll survive for this round. He might not the next, though, and the thought thrills her as much as it terrifies her.

She hopes that he doesn't find out that this was a murder attempt from her but she still came by his sickbed in the end. He'd hold that over her for absolutely _ever_, she thinks wryly.

Her grip on his hand matches his.

* * *

**A/N: I kind of miss Mr. Bliss, even though I never really wrote about him...**

**~Mademise Morte, June 14, 2012. **


	15. Chapter 15

_Thank God I'm not in Ireland with my books_ is the first thought that crosses the mind of one China Sorrows as she wakes up to the smell of flames. The ink that she's accumulated on her skin over the years shines out from her, but she feels it more than sees it like she wields it more from reflex than will.

She makes good her escape, not quite smiling but wanting very much to. She's been sedentary for so long, and a little excitement is nothing to be scoffed at. Her clothes are ruined, of course, and she hooks her shoes off before it's strictly necessary, but she doesn't care because she feels _alive_ again.

She runs and it's like everything that has held her back burnt away with her last place of residence and she doesn't know quite where she's going to go now, but she knows that wherever it is, she's not going to be hiding any more, because she's tried that, tried that for so many years, and she just can't do it.

China Sorrows is a complicated person. The one thing about her that is absolutely clear is that she was never meant to hide.

* * *

**A/N: Writing this felt a little weird, but it was fun.  
**

**~Mademise Morte, June 15, 2012.  
**


	16. Chapter 16

The sound of the slowly ticking clock is louder than the sound of their breath as they lie together with their gazes locked and their hands touching, fingertip to palm. They trace words onto each others skin, sigils and symbols from languages long dead but never yet forgotten, and the sense of peace to them now is absolute.

China is glory splayed against the soft surface that is the bed, with the red of her lips bright as the blood she's spilled over the years and the dark of her hair as deep as the sins she has committed and has yet to get around to. She is perfection in all her meticulous disarray.

Miss Nuncio looks into her lover's eyes, sees a shade of blue that is more transparent than all the lies that have spread through her life like a wildfire and she thinks that, when this moment ends, she wants never to forget it, because to forget China as she is in this moment—almost vulnerable despite her dignity—would be to forget the beauty of all this world, and after all, that was why Miss Nuncio began on her quest for every tongue spoken by man.

* * *

**A/N: For some reason, I've never really considered this pairing on a serious basis before...**

**~Mademise Morte, June 16, 2012.  
**


	17. Chapter 17

She watches him through the walls, rendered transparent for her eyes and hers alone by one of her rather more inventive works of magical loquaciousness, guaranteed by tautology after tautology built into ever bloodstained brick of the walls of this castle, because even though Nefarian Serpine is using it now, it is very much hers. She raised it from the belly of the earth with the raw of her hands, and it knows to whom it owes its existence.

She listens to him mourn through the vibrations in the ground, torn through tremors of the earthquakes that bleed off into forevers under her care. She listens to him break into as many pieces as any one man can break.

She listens to the sounds of the ripples of consequence that she has had on the ocean that is the world, and as much as she regrets it, as much as it wrenches away at her, as much as she occasionally thinks that _perhaps that could have been better handled_, she doesn't mind.

It's painful to listen to him shatter, but it's well worth it, and given the chance, there would be no question that she would live it all again.

* * *

**A/N: I have an odd relationship with the concept of China/Skul. I feel like I should really enjoy it, but I don't. At all.  
**

**~Mademise Morte, June 17, 2012.  
**


	18. Chapter 18

Her flesh is milk and silk and honey, yielding and sweet and soft, but her bones are as tough as diamond. Her eyes are serenity, indifference, mirrors that show you your own soul rather than hers, and her core has never been real.

She was a creation of the Nye from the beginning, always entirely so. It taught her her first words, followed shortly by the rules of rhetoric, and once it had given her the truths of the earth it showed her the ways of the lie. It dissected animals with her to show her anatomy, and as finely as the heart of the hummingbird thrums it showed her the war drums that are anger and grief and being ready to do anything. _Anything_.

It set her out into the world content with its work, started then on her brother, who instead learnt the ways of the fist, of the knife, of the chloroform-drenched upholstery, and as much fun as that was, as much as it loved its new supply of corpses, it missed her immensely.

She was fake, always, a patchwork mechanical for whatever seemed of import, but at the same time, she was entirely, marvelously, horrifyingly _real_.

* * *

**A/N: I had so much fun with this one.  
**

**~Mademise Morte, June 18, 2012.  
**


	19. Chapter 19

Her wings have been clipped, the stars are stolen from her eyes, and her voice doesn't sound like her own, especially not to herself.

She hurts when it's cold, like she is one gaping open wound, and she doesn't know if she is ever going to stop counting her ribs with her fingertips. It's the only thing that lets her stop panicking about there being nothing left to protect her beating heart.

Every evening, once the moon has risen—except on nights where it hasn't, or is too cloud-covered to be seen, in which case she settles on whichever point of time seems best—she counts yesterday's deaths. She limits herself to people she knew, people she would have recognized, people she might have cared for once.

Reading their names is a comfort. She's never quite known who to blame for the things she's gone through, but for these people there are answers. There are always answers.

She's still not quite ready to fly yet, but she might never be, and she still isn't prepared to see all the hope there is, but some of it certainly, and she still can't shout, but she knows.

She knows.

Someday, she will.

* * *

**A/N: For some reason, I've been doing an awful lot of non-pairing ones.**

**~Mademise Morte, June 19, 2012. **


	20. Chapter 20

The sun's rays spill their lazy way across her wooden floor where she is still cradling his body in her arms and his head against her shoulder. For all the warmth, she is more casket than crib. They both know that.

The sound of her breath is quiet, as always. The first time he met her, in fact, he thought she was an animated corpse of some kind – she was grotesquely skinny and alabaster pale, graceful in her movement and soft, so soft, right up until the moment she wants to be heard.

She terrified him then, and she terrifies him now. It would take a blind man to miss her charms and a daft one to miss the danger she brings about her like a cloak. He might not have eyes, but he sure as Hell isn't blind. He hopes he's not daft.

He still wonders why he associates with her, and has never come up with a satisfactory answer other than the way he feels in her presence, how she shocks him into being someone completely other, the way his life suddenly seems to have a meaning and a sense when they're together.

For him, though, that's enough.

* * *

**A/N: Sorrows/Sanguine is about the most fun pairing ever, and yet it ends up so somber in my loving care. WHY.  
**

**~Mademise Morte, June 20, 2012.  
**


	21. Chapter 21

She never doubted, for a sliver of a second, that, for as much as China meant to her, she was absolutely nothing to China. She resigned herself to being inconsequential, to being a side-thought, if that much.

She wasn't disappointed, was indeed thoroughly used by China over the long years they spent in each other's company. It hurt quite a bit, both literally and metaphorically, but somehow she couldn't keep away, no matter how much she resolved to.

Then, one day, the praise began.

It didn't start out particularly grandiose. It was an approving nod, a murmured sentiment of appreciation, an extra cup of tea brewed. It was enough.

It took a while to become anything overt. China was never one to rush, and there was a lot to go through.

Because at the end, there was trust, and at the end, there was repayment of every debt ever owed and more, because at the end, there was love.

Looking back, Tanith had a lot of things she questioned, things she would have changed. She didn't really regret any of it, though, and even though she had no idea why, she didn't particularly mind.

China tended to have that effect.

* * *

**A/N: Ah, Chinith.**

**~Mademise Morte, June 21, 2012. **


	22. Chapter 22

They watch the sun set together, China tracing the line of Murder's hip and Murder on the verge of falling asleep.

"This is how I want to die," she murmurs, turning to her lover, meeting her eyes. They've been friends since forever, it feels, and close. You'd expect them to be, given all that they've gone through.

"In bed?" China asks, quirking an eyebrow. Murder laughs with her.

"With you," she corrects gently, when she has her breath back. "Watching the passing of something beautiful and knowing that there's something beautiful in this world yet."

China says nothing.

"That's why you have to survive me," Murder continues, wishing she wouldn't. "So that there will always be something beautiful left."

"And what will happen when I die?" China asks, voice thin and cool as metal wire.

"We will meet in the land where the dead hold their court," Murder answers, "and you will be greater than me, as always. You will be the most wondrous thing that they have ever known. And for all those people left behind, you will be the reason why death isn't a fear."

"Then why can't I die first?"

"Because death will always be my fear."

* * *

**A/N: I am oddly happy about how this one turned out.  
**

**~Mademise Morte, June 22, 2012.  
**


	23. Chapter 23

He said that the mirror was vain to ever think that it could be a reflection of her beauty and she said that he was stupid to think that something that utterly ridiculously conceived would be met with her amusement and they went on with life just a bit more cheerful.

She loved him, for all his bad poetry and his crack-brained ideas and his five-in-the-morning telephone calls, because he was something bright in a world that was shadowed, dark and closing in on her more than she really ever wanted to admit, because he was something worth protecting. She loved him because some things have to be unconditional and entirely unreasonable.

And he loved her. He loved her for all her pretenses and fears and 'if-I-pretend-you're-not-here-will-you-go-away?'s, because she was strong enough for two people and she only needed to be for the one, and he loved her like he had no other choice. He didn't quite understand it, but then, he never really needed to.

Throughout his life, he never really fully understood the meaning of love. This was okay for two reasons: firstly, it seemed to work out for him anyway.

Secondly, he knew that it was she.

* * *

**A/N: Not entirely sure about the pronouns in the last part, but ah well. Gordon/China is fun regardless.  
**

**~Mademise Morte, June 23, 2012.  
**


	24. Chapter 24

This is the dream that hangs in the space behind the stilled turmoil of the sea that was her eyes.

Peace, with her legs and her arms made useless by rotting chains of want, back arched away from the cold-iron-wall. Envy, made vivid by the scent of honey and cloves. Curiosity with a pile of dead-cat-corpses.

The sound of decay, beat over and over on the skins that formed over the edges of the air, spoken like whispers of words that have long choked.

China cannot remember the last time she breathed freely and without fear. She has a sneaking suspicion that it was just before the balancing of the scales that she's always refused to believe govern magic.

He'd told her she'd be beautiful. He wasn't entirely wrong, if you went by the visage in the mirror that stares out at her like an accusation of something she never entirely meant to commit. But she remembers what her sleep used to be like, and this isn't it. This is nothing like it.

She thinks that she'd like to revoke whatever order it was that brought her to this, but she knows that she'd only give it again, every time.

* * *

**A/N: Do you think this one feels unbalanced?  
**

**~Mademise Morte, June 24, 2012.  
**


	25. Chapter 25

The surface of the tea in the delicately painted little porcelain cup ripples with the tremors running through her hands as she stares into the honest-wide-dark eyes of the girl who is many, many times younger than she.

"You're still alive," she observes demurely, hides her mouth with the rim of the teacup, drinks like it's a remedy for all that ails.

"Yes," Valkyrie says shortly. "Did you not expect me to be?"

"Not particularly," China says, carefully placing her now emptied beverage container back onto the table. "I can't say I'm disappointed, though."

Valkyrie knows that that's the closest she's ever going to get to an overt expression of affection any time soon, but she doesn't mind. It's honestly quite lovely seeing her back in fighting form. Skulduggery has assured her that this is the best China has been in centuries. "Would you like to know why I'm here, then?" Valkyrie asks.

"Perhaps," China says, cursing present lack of tea. "Would you care to tell me?"

"To see you again," Valkyrie says, all honesty. "That was what kept me going through it all. The thought of returning and finding you."

China doesn't say anything. She doesn't really need to.

* * *

**A/N: I had a lot of fun with this one.  
**

**~Mademise Morte, June 25, 2012.  
**


	26. Chapter 26

The sky is the color of ash and my hands shake as I seek out hers from under the heaviness that is the cloth of her clothing, her flamboyant outer layer of illusion. It is too cold for thought, and her skin is as ice.

But she moves a little closer to me, her grasp like a vise, and I know how much she is hurting, on tonight of all nights. She tilts herself closer to me, and I'm ready when the revelation splits itself open on the canvas of her lips.

I cannot count the hours as they pass, for as much as everything flies by now, it seems like every moment is eternity, and when I take my leave I know that I have left a great amount of myself in her care.

It is testimony to the amount of alcohol I have imbibed and the level of infatuation from which I suffer that I cannot bring myself to hope that she will treat me well, with respect and with dignity, in the future. All I want is that I be of some use, of any kind of help to her at all, with nothing desired in return.

* * *

**A/N: China/Tanith is fun.  
**

**~Mademise Morte, June 26, 2012.  
**


	27. Chapter 27

The sound of her footsteps does not change a whit and that is how I know that she is no longer really here, has abandoned her flesh to automatic movement and taken her mind, her formidable mind, someplace else entirely.

I welcome her into the house, knowing that she doesn't care and would have entered with or without my permiss. I offer her what I have, and as habitude goes, she takes what she needs from me.

The day winds away, as does the night, and I know she has returned when the dawn rises, because she twitches at the sun like it burns. It's the first time I've seen her vulnerable, and I think she knows that, because she smiles at me like I mean something, like I've ever meant anything, when she leaves.

My life grinds on, clockwork machinery set to snap at two minutes to midnight, and as always, she is the woman with the key. Her visits seem erratic to me, but planned for her, always planned, because they are too well spaced to be mere chance. I am toil for her, something requiring effort, and sometimes I wish I weren't. Other times, I am glad.

* * *

**A/N: I didn't realize how much I enjoy China/Gordon until I wrote this calendar.  
**

**~Mademise Morte, June 27, 2012.  
**


	28. Chapter 28

I tell her my fears, one after another, everything that has ever been the dark horse that steals into my sleep, and she smiles, behind the elegant mask nothing more than a grinning urchin child gorging herself of sickly-sweet candied apples. I know my horrors are to her wonders, that every tale gives more than I could ever say that I'm prepared to give, but still I recount them.

My voice sounds hollow, rings in the chambers of my ears like a robotic synthesization of words that should have been forgotten but never were, reconstituted from the dregs of what has been removed wholesale, and just a little too carelessly. Wizened fortune reader with dancing eyes and spider-fingers and too many colors shifting beneath her skin, she peers into the patterns left by overbrewed tea.

In return, she offers me her body, her presence, her time, busy little businesswoman with more want than sense and more sense than most achieve in a lifetime, higher than reality in heels of stiletto knives. It isn't enough, is more than enough, is a fair price, could never ever hope to be, and in the end, it doesn't entirely matter. It's what I get.

* * *

**A/N: Morwenna/China. Because this month just hasn't been crack-y enough.  
**

**~Mademise Morte, June 28, 2012.  
**


	29. Chapter 29

She isn't drowning in the water of her bathtub, but in an odd sort of way, she wishes she were. It would be easier than this, certainly.

She's watching the bruises bloom, unwanted mushrooming clouds of unnatural disaster that she could never stay a spectator to, and she is feeling herself fall apart and wanting to be anywhere else.

The water turns black, crimson, gray, whirlpooling into the drain and being replaced with speed. Petulant, she wishes that she could be restored just as simply. She can't be, of course, and it's silly, but that has never been much of a deterrent to the black-crimson-gray of the insanity that has colonized her for so long.

Sometimes she blames it on the years, the decades, the centuries she has spent alive when she shouldn't be. She tries not to, though, because all that does is awaken the memories of cuts and cuts and more cuts on the surface of her flesh, and she doesn't want to feel those knives ever again.

They've been replaced now by fists, and those don't feel much better, but still her hands curl and she fills herself with the fire of resolve. It's better than nothing.

* * *

**A/N: Not particularly cheerful, but I had fun with it.  
**

**~Mademise Morte, June 29, 2012.  
**


	30. Chapter 30

When she was young and her veins ran with liquid flame and her eyes were sub-zero in Kelvin, she said that she would laugh at the end of the world, every time, because if she didn't laugh then she would cry and that would be a terrible waste of a lifetime, and so she laughs now almost constantly, because every moment is the end of someone's world.

In an odd way, she both wants someone to notice and no-one to, because on the one hand, it would be nice to have a partner in the gaiety that is defying the end in all its incarnations, and on the other hand there is the fact that she feels that she is quite distinctly going mad, and that's the sort of thing that you have to do alone. That doesn't stop people from finding out, though, and every time, she is glad, up until the moment when she is laughing for their own endings.

One day, she hopes to herself, she will find someone to join her, and someone to outlive her, someone to laugh when she cannot. It's a silly kind of hope, maybe, but one that she keeps close nevertheless.

* * *

**A/N: I hope you have enjoyed this endeavor. See you in September!  
**

**~Mademise Morte, June 30, 2012.  
**


End file.
